


Beast and Beauty, Bonnie and Clyde

by WorryinglyInnocent



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Gen, Ghosts?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-17
Updated: 2013-03-17
Packaged: 2017-12-05 12:49:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/723493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WorryinglyInnocent/pseuds/WorryinglyInnocent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“They went by many names – the new Bonnie and Clyde, French and Gold, the Magician and his Assistant, the Spinner and the Caretaker. But most people, including Mary Margaret, knew them as the Beauty and the Beast.”</p>
<p>A pair of extremely unusual thieves pay a visit to a bank. Cashier Mary Margaret can only watch and wonder as they perform what could almost be classed as magic…</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beast and Beauty, Bonnie and Clyde

**Author's Note:**

> I have absolutely no idea where this came from. It just popped into my head fully formed and refused to leave until I wrote it down. It then grew and grew and grew until it was sprawling out of proportion and I had to rein it in. I’m still a little unsure of the ending. 
> 
> It’s very different to the things I normally write, so see how you get on with it.

It was going to be today. Mary Margaret could tell from the moment she walked into the bank and began to open the cashier’s desk with David. Everyone knew that they would come eventually. They’d heard the reports, they were getting closer and closer. They had warned Ms Mills, but she had been fool enough to believe that their little establishment was safe, that Storybrooke was too small a town to be on their radar.

Her employees on the cashier’s desk, however, were not quite so power-blinded. No-one was safe when _they_ came into town. Twenty-six banks along the East Coast so far, and not one police force could catch them.

Mary Margaret sometimes thought, privately, that the police didn’t want to catch them. They stole for a purpose, the Robin Hood of New England and his pretty little Maid Marian. They targeted the depositories of the rich and the famous, dispensing the wealth of those with dollars to spare to the truly desperate – but always at a price, for nothing in this world is free. There were the usual stories of deals for first borns, but mainly they traded in silence. Banks and police could bribe and threaten, but the desperate souls they helped never revealed the secrets of their mysterious benefactors.

They went by many names – the new Bonnie and Clyde, French and Gold (rumoured to be their actual names, but who could trust a rumour?), the Magician and his Assistant, the Caretaker and the Spinner, for reasons still unknown. But most people, including Mary Margaret, knew them as the Beauty and the Beast.

The bank opened at nine o’clock sharp as usual, but no customers arrived. Perhaps they too felt that something was going to happen. As she wandered over to the window, more certain than ever of a sense of impending… _something_ , Mary Margaret wondered. Against the odds, a small part of her wanted to meet the legendary duo who had come from nowhere and gained notoriety within a matter of months. She wondered at the relationship between them. From the wanted posters she had seen, they were chalk and cheese. She had been tempted to think them father and daughter rather than lovers. But photographs, especially grainy ones taken from CCTV footage, could be deceptive, and Mary Margaret, like so many other corporate bank cashiers who both dreaded and anticipated a meeting with the Beauty and the Beast, was left to fill in the gaps with her imagination.

Perhaps that was all part of their infamy, the fact that so little was known about them. They came out of nowhere, nothing but the smooth purr of a black Cadillac preceding their arrival, and they vanished just as quickly after performing their heist.

David’s voice broke her reverie.

“Mary.” He sighed. “Mary, nothing is going to happen. It’s been weeks since they last hit a bank.”

“Exactly, David.” Mary came back over to the counter beside him and straightened her neck scarf. “They’re overdue.”

“And why on earth do you think they’ll come _here_?” He tapped the desk, as of to emphasise precisely where ‘here’ was.

“Every time a bank manager has boasted that they’re safe, they’ve been made to eat their words,” Mary Margaret murmured. “They target the arrogant ones, and Her Majesty is nothing if not… insistent.”

David looked at the two security guards flanking the entrance to the bank. ”We’ll be fine,” he reassured her.

“They’ve broken through more security than this. They’re only two of them, how do they do it? They say the Beast’s lame, for God’s sake.”

“They say a lot of things.” David gave her shoulder a squeeze, ostensibly to calm her down, but Mary Margaret found that she was not altogether afraid. She was skittish, yes, but only from a sense of anticipation. She was anxious for something, anything to happen, to release the tension in the atmosphere.

A small part of her, a very small part, wanted them to come. To take Ms Mills down a peg or to. To give her a taste of her own medicine. She squeezed money out of people like she was wringing a wet cloth. Perhaps it would do her good to see it given back to the downtrodden.

Her ears pricked up as she heard a car at the other end of the street.

“Did you hear that?” she asked.

David rolled his eyes. “You’re just being paran…” he began, but the words died in his throat as the purr of the engine grew louder and a black Cadillac pulled up outside the bank.

A woman got out of the passenger seat. She was in her late twenties at most, and dressed demurely in a blue frock cut well below her knees, with kitten heeled shoes and a ribbon in her chestnut curls. Mary Margaret frowned as she skipped nimbly over to the parking meter and counted out change. Surely this prim and proper woman could not be a bank robber wanted in four states. Surely bank robbers didn’t pay for their parking.

But then again, the Beauty and the Beast had never been your average bank robbers, if the strange tales from other heists were to be believed.

The meter paid, the young woman came back to the car and knocked on the driver’s window before going to the boot and opening it, taking out a plain black overnight bag.

The driver exited the car. An older man, dark hair going grey, dressed in an impeccably cut suit and carrying a gold handled cane. He limped heavily on his right side; Mary Margaret suspected a badly broken knee at some point in the past. He walked round to the back of the car and kissed the young women tenderly on the lips.

These people, her logical mind told her calmly, could not be bank robbers. They simply couldn’t be. It was not only their appearance that rendered her sceptical, it was the leisurely calm of their actions. Thieves worked fast, they were nervous, on edge, afraid of being caught.

No. This was just another couple who had happened to park a black Cadillac outside their bank. David was right. She was just being paran…

All these reassuring thoughts were totally dispelled when the young woman opened the overnight bag and, in broad daylight on a main street, pulled out a sawn-off shotgun, which she handed to the man before taking out a revolver, which she kept.

The woman picked up the bag, the man slung the shotgun over his shoulder, and the Beauty and the Beast entered the bank.

It took the security guards a few moments to react, due to the sheer audacity of the actions. No one else would walk, armed, into a bank so calmly and just stand in the foyer, surveying the scenery. Even with two handguns pointed at them, the couple’s tranquil demeanour never slipped.

“Good morning,” said the man. “My name is Mr Gold, and this is my assistant, the lovely Miss French. We’d like to speak to your manager about a rather large withdrawal.”

“Erm…” Mary Margaret faltered. She’d had training for emergencies like this one, but in that moment, faced with the almost cheerfulness of the two thieves, she couldn’t remember it. She was very aware that she was part of an armed heist, and she was very aware that she ought to have a gun pointed at her, but she didn’t. The sawn-off was still casually resting over Mr Gold’s shoulder, and Miss French was tapping the revolver against her thigh, but neither of them had actually made any move to threaten.

“Call Regina,” David hissed in her ear, his fingers feeling along under the desk for the panic button that would seal the vault and summon the police.

There was a loud thwack on the counter and Mary Margaret looked down to see the gold cane handle resting on the wood above David’s hand. Gold smiled unpleasantly, a leer that turned up one corner of his upper lip to reveal a flash of his namesake in his mouth.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, dearie,” he said, and his fingers flexed on the sawn-off’s trigger. Mary Margaret gulped. She’d never heard any reports of anyone being killed or injured in these robberies, but there was a first time for everything, and she didn’t want to be it. She watched as Gold pulled the cane off the desk and leaned on it again. How in God’s name had he moved so fast, and without her noticing?

“Well,” Miss French called politely from her position, stock centre in the foyer. “Are you going to call Ms Mills or not? I do hate to rush you, it’s so impolite, but we have other calls to make.”

“Indeed,” Gold added.  “Our services are very much in demand, it seems, especially in this economic day and age. Never seen a crisis like it, have you my dear? So many people being ruined by their banks.”

Miss French shook her head.

“Never in all our years.”

Mary Margaret decided that it would be best to comply. She picked up the phone and pressed the button to call Regina’s office.

“Yes?” came the irritable reply.

“They’re here,” Mary Margaret whispered.

“Miss Blanchard, _who_ is here?”

“The Beauty and the Beast.”

Regina swore down the phone.

“I’m on my way.”

Mary Margaret could tell that she was speaking through gritted teeth. So much for being assured that they would be safe.

Gold had moved away from the counter, and had returned to Miss French, muttering something in her ear. The young woman listened intently, adjusting her grip on the overnight bag. The muscles in her upper arm were tight; it was evidently heavy and contained more than just the armaments.

One of the security guards crept forward, his gun outstretched.

“You don’t want to do that, dearie,” said Gold, never taking his eyes from his paramour’s.

The guard, who was new and, like Mary Margaret, had never witnessed a heist like this one, did it anyway.

 Mary Margaret could not say how they dodged the bullet, but it never made contact, instead lodging in the wall opposite. Mary Margaret peered at the angle. It should have been a straight hit in Gold’s lower leg, but it was as if the bullet had passed straight through him.

Her brow furrowed as Gold turned his dark eyes on the guard.

“I _said_ , you _don’t_ want to do that.”

The man’s stare was intense, unblinking, unnerving. Mary Margaret shivered, as if someone had walked over her grave.

“Put it down, boy,” he hissed, jerking his head in the direction of the pistol. “You’ll do more damage to yourself than to us, I can assure you.”

“No-one’s bulletproof,” David spat.

Gold wheeled round to look at him.

“Mr Nolan, that’s really not the sort of comment that a man who is not holding a gun makes to a man who is.”

“Don’t kill him!” Mary Margaret leapt from her frozen position to stand in front of David. Sure, he said some pretty stupid things, but she couldn’t stand by and watch him get killed because of it.

Gold rolled his eyes.

“Whoever said anything about killing him, Miss Blanchard?”

It was only then that Mary Margaret realised what was wrong with the situation. Her name badge had only her first name, not her surname. How did he know she was Miss Blanchard, and David was Mr Nolan?

She shook herself mentally, too hyped on the adrenaline rush of her impromptu heroics to move physically. They were professionals, they’d cased the place and knew who worked there… That was all there was to it.

The shotgun was still resting across his shoulder with practised ease. Mary Margaret wondered if he had ever actually fired it, or if the Beauty and the Beast got everything they needed through sheer shock value and charisma.

“Since Ms Mills is on her way, my dear…” Gold turned back to Miss French. “Perhaps we could begin the proceedings. After all, they don’t call me a magician for nothing.”

Miss French smiled sweetly, almost apologetically, and dropped the bag. It landed with a heavy thud and an ominous crack, and the bank’s foyer was filled with smoke.

Except, it wasn’t. Mary Margaret could still see Miss French as clear as day, her arms now folded but her stance still the same, unmoved. The security guards were nowhere to be seen.

Mary Margaret decided that the best course of action was self-preservation, and she dived under the desk, grabbing David’s wrist and pulling him down with her. At least if they were going to die, they’d be together. She still hadn’t admitted her feelings for her colleague, and now seemed like a good time.

She hit the panic button that David’s hand had been hovering over, and saw the red lights under the desk begin to flash. The vault was locking down.

“Oh please.” Gold’s voice sounded bored. “There really is no need to hide. If we wanted to hurt you, we’d have done it by now.”

Mary Margaret heard his uneven step come up to the counter, stop for several seconds, and come behind it. He’d picked the staff door lock. He leaned down and peered under the desk.

“What are you hoping to achieve down there?” he asked, his voice everso slightly amused. “Oh, never mind.”

“It’s cheap stage magic,” David said, struggling out of Mary Margaret’s grasp to face the thief. “Illusions, smoke and mirrors.”

“David, he’s got a gun!” Mary Margaret moaned, trying to drag him back down. Gold merely smiled unpleasantly again.

“Really?” he said. “Really?”

The fingers holding the cane flexed a little, and Mary Margaret was unnerved when he changed tack completely.

“Where could Ms Mills have got to? She seems to be taking an awfully long time.”

“All right, all right, I’m here, now what the hell’s going on? Miss Blanchard, get up from under the table.”

Mary Margaret struggled to her feet, leaning on the desk for support as her shaking legs refused to carry her.

“Ah, Ms Mills.” Gold turned from David to the bank manager, his manner disarmingly polite. “How kind of you to join us.”

Miss French came up alongside him, seemingly from nowhere, and slipped her free arm around his waist.

Ms Mills’ face was ashen, as if she had seen a ghost.

“You,” she breathed. “You… My mother warned me about you.”

“Too bad you didn’t hear her, then, dearie,” said Gold. “Too, too bad. It runs in the family. It always does. Tell me, when we hit Spencer’s bank last month, did you not suspect then? Did you not wonder if you might be next? Your families were always such friendly rivals.”

Ms Mills shook her head. She looked as if she was about to be sick.

“There’s always a price, Ms Mills,” Gold said. “Sooner or later, you will have to pay for what you’ve done, for the people you have trampled in your path to glory, just as your mother did. She tried to warn you, but you were deaf to her entreaties, and moulded yourself into her shape even as you tried to cut loose from her completely. We’re merely here to settle the debt.”

 “I thought…” Ms Mills began.

“You thought you could hide?” Gold asked lightly. “Oh no, my dear, the price of your actions always catches up with you in the end.” He turned to Miss French. “Are we ready, my darling?”

“Of course, love.”

“Then we’d best be off. Calls to make, people to see. Scores to settle. Favours to call in.”

He gave a final leer.

“Dividends to be paid.”

They melted into the smoke, which only now seemed to fill the room completely.

“By the way,” Gold’s voice called back to them. “Your mother sends her regards, Ms Mills, and says you left the keys to the electricity meter under the toaster.”

At this parting comment, the bank manager doubled over and vomited violently. Mary Margaret couldn’t blame her.

Cora Mills had been dead for the past ten years.

X

The air-conditioning soon took care of the smoke, and Mary Margaret wondered why it hadn’t before, leaving two very scared and confused security guards looking at each other, the bullet in the wall and the crack in the floor where the black bag had been. The Cadillac was gone, although Mary Margaret had not heard it drive away.

The police arrived a few moments later, and Mary Margaret relayed her tale to the detective, an amiable man – “call me Graham”. It was clear, though, that he didn’t believe a word of what she was telling him.

“Erm, boss…” A younger officer came into the little back office where Graham was taking testimonies. “You’ve got to see this.”

Mary Margaret followed the detective out of the room.

“Two million’s worth has gone from the vault,” he said.

“That’s usual for Gold and French; that’s the amount they normally take according to the other forces who’ve been investigating them,” said Graham.

“But boss, they never went in the vault,” the younger officer said. “Check the CCTV, check the computer logs… That vault door never opened from the time they came in to the time they left. And yet the money’s gone, and it was there two hours ago.”

“No fingerprints, no DNA,” said another officer. “No forensic evidence at all. It’s like these guys are ghosts.”

Mary Margaret resisted the urge to be sick herself.

She had known that there was something not right about the robbery, something had been off. Gold had known things he shouldn’t have, and the smoke had been more than a mere stage illusion. The comments he had made to Ms Mills. The bullet that had seemed to go straight through him, leaving him uninjured…

The way they could never be traced after a robbery and yet seemed to go about things in such an obvious manner.

The way they were never seen until someone heard a car turn into the street where the bank was.

The way they appeared and vanished, doing only their job, and nothing more.

Had they really been robbed by a couple of ghosts? Or were they simply consummate professionals, who had been in their business so long they knew all the tricks of the trade, including how to disappear without trace? Spirits on a crusade to help desperate souls from beyond the grave, robbing the rich and giving to the poor (in return for a favour, of course), or plain and simple thieves with a twisted sense of social conscience? The Beauty and the Beast: Miss French, so sweet, and Mr Gold, so fearsome. And yet somehow, in that moment when they had kissed outside the bank, they had fit together so perfectly…

Could they really be supernatural?

Mary Margaret shrugged. In the end, the outcome was the same. Ms Mills’ bank had fallen victim to them. She was not the first, and she would not be the last. The thought was comforting. So long as there was injustice in the world, so long as there were souls rendered desperate through the actions of others, they would be there. Bonnie and Clyde. The Spinner and the Caretaker. The Magician and his Assistant.

The Beauty and the Beast.


End file.
